Tamarillos:
If you aren't an NZer you may not understand my excitement or even what I am excited about.
Tamarillos are one of my two favourite fruits and they are strictly seasonal. And fortunately each one is available at a slightly different time of year.
Feijoas are Favourite A and Tamarillos are Favourite 1, and they are both wonderful. I don't think I could grow tamarillos here in Parkwood, but I'm happy to give it a go. And we now have 3 small feijoa trees planted along the west wall of the house. All we have to do is keep the damn pukekos away.
But I digress, as usual.
Earlier this week I was in the fruit and veg section of the supermarket and saw tamarillos, looking luscious and delicious and a beautiful deep ruby/crimson colour. The price was $24.99 a kilo, so I bought 10 of them and to hell with the expense... which I didn't look at, by the way. That is a strategy I adopted a long time ago, and I know it's a strategy of privilege and good income. I first took it up when we were having a bathroom fitted in the moonporch (sunporch that got no sun) of Cherswud, our Johnsonville home. It had windows on the two outside walls and needed an imposing windowsill to cover the 10" deep stone walls. I had the choice between a piece of 1" dressed rimu or 2" dressed rimu. I chose the 2" and said to the builder not to tell me how much it cost.
So for the last two days I have had tamarillos, yoghurt and muesli for brekkie - delicious! And today I bought online two boxes of tamarillos at slightly less than I paid per kg in the supermarket. Yay!!!
Accoutrements for the ponds:
And we are getting a pump and fountain in the ponds outside our place and Janet's. The two ponds are a lovely feature however ours has always had clear water that is full of algae and Janet's water is cloudy but the algae, if present, doesn't clump. A pump and fountain will keep the water circulating and clear and limit algae growth. So we can get fish in our pond, just as Janet has in hers. We do have really lovely waterlilies in their season and we had a frog earlier this year. Maybe with clearer water we will have more frogs - that will be cool.
My GST bill:
Almost since I started contracting way way back in the 90s, ACP has completed my tax returns, both withholding payments and GST (VAT to you UK people). He took it on when I had a grief-stricken tantrum over my GST return and stabbed the paper form with the pen, having made a couple of rookie mistakes. The problem was that the form was on the Winnie-ther-Pooh mousemat, and I stabbed Piglet...multiple times, as I have just been reminded. 👿👿👿😓😓😓
And he has always done a sterling job, apart from once when he was late filing his own return and used my tax return to pay his overdue fee!
But he has now badly blotted his copybook and I may have to punish him severely. When I get emails from IRD I confidently ignore them because my TB (Tax B*tch - his name for himself, not mine!) has it all in hand. In fact it's something he is religious about, nay - almost obsessive about - akin to his obsession with USA politics and podcasts on that subject, but that's another story.
I have recently had a couple of emails from IRD which, as I said, I confidently ignored. But yesterday the TB informed me that I owed IRD $2000 in late fees and interest because I hadn't filed a GST return for the six months ending March 31 this year. Considering I haven't earned anything since December 22 and my last payment came through in January 23, the GST return for Oct 23 - Mar24 would have been a NIL return.
But had my TB filed it? Had he heck. And of course, it's no longer possible to phone IRD up, speak to a person and explain. So after much gnashing of teeth and no success at getting through the phone system using voice recognition, we sent IRD an email on their contact form. I had to apologise for overlooking the return. And it somehow didn't seem appropriate to say in the email that my TB was undergoing punitive measures for his oversight.
Naturally the NIL return was filed last night, so now we await a decision on clemency or no clemency. Punitive measures could be increased if clemency is not forthcoming. Listen for the howls...
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